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The Scientific Paper Is Obsolete (theatlantic.com)
James Somers, writing for The Atlantic: The scientific paper -- the actual form of it -- was one of the enabling inventions of modernity. Before it was developed in the 1600s, results were communicated privately in letters, ephemerally in lectures, or all at once in books. There was no public forum for incremental advances. By making room for reports of single experiments or minor technical advances, journals made the chaos of science accretive. Scientists from that point forward became like the social insects: They made their progress steadily, as a buzzing mass.
The earliest papers were in some ways more readable than papers are today. They were less specialized, more direct, shorter, and far less formal. Calculus had only just been invented. Entire data sets could fit in a table on a single page. What little "computation" contributed to the results was done by hand and could be verified in the same way.
The more sophisticated science becomes, the harder it is to communicate results. Papers today are longer than ever and full of jargon and symbols. They depend on chains of computer programs that generate data, and clean up data, and plot data, and run statistical models on data. These programs tend to be both so sloppily written and so central to the results that it's contributed to a replication crisis, or put another way, a failure of the paper to perform its most basic task: to report what you've actually discovered, clearly enough that someone else can discover it for themselves.
The earliest papers were in some ways more readable than papers are today. They were less specialized, more direct, shorter, and far less formal. Calculus had only just been invented. Entire data sets could fit in a table on a single page. What little "computation" contributed to the results was done by hand and could be verified in the same way.
The more sophisticated science becomes, the harder it is to communicate results. Papers today are longer than ever and full of jargon and symbols. They depend on chains of computer programs that generate data, and clean up data, and plot data, and run statistical models on data. These programs tend to be both so sloppily written and so central to the results that it's contributed to a replication crisis, or put another way, a failure of the paper to perform its most basic task: to report what you've actually discovered, clearly enough that someone else can discover it for themselves.
That you can flood a scientific paper with reams of computer generated data is NOT science. That's technobabble. The point of the scientific paper is to lay down, ON PAPER, the technique you used and what you observed and then, in a separate section, editorializing what you've proven (or refuted).
That so-called scientific papers will merely dump the computer generated data or flood the paper with technical jargon without exposing the underlying algorithm or technique IS the problem.
At one time science was intended for the masses - that the Atlantic attributes this to "a simpler time" is also moronic as it was the intent of the authors, in fact all authors of the time, to write clearly and succinctly so that anyone could understand their work. You see that not only in the scientific papers of the time but also in the laws (the US Constitution). You also see the same problem in laws today where laws are now tends of thousands of pages long. How is any one person (let alone a dedicated group) supposed to understand the law as written?
To wit - it's a societal problem, not a scientific one or a problem with "overcomplex science"
At one time science was intended for the masses - that the Atlantic attributes this to "a simpler time" is also moronic as it was the intent of the authors, in fact all authors of the time, to write clearly and succinctly so that anyone could understand their work.
Science has never been "for the masses". Most concepts of any meaningful complexity are not going to be written at an 8th grade reading level. Issac Newton's Principia is certainly not written "for the masses" nor should it be expected to be dumbed down. As Einstein once put it, things should be made as simple as possible but no simpler.
You see that not only in the scientific papers of the time but also in the laws (the US Constitution).
The Constitution isn't really a law. It is a framework for the laws. It sets the boundaries that are fleshed out by the laws. The actual federal laws are the United States Code, the United States Reports and the Code of Federal Regulations. There also
You also see the same problem in laws today where laws are now tends of thousands of pages long. How is any one person (let alone a dedicated group) supposed to understand the law as written?
You are presupposing that it is a good thing that laws be so simple that a single person can understand and know all them. The reality of our society is that it is so complex that the laws governing it inevitably will be similarly complex. Make a simple law and there are going to be gaps in that law unless you add complexity to deal with the corner cases. To circle back, science has no obligation to be simple enough for "the masses" to comprehend any or all of it.